


Scientific Ethics

by Kiara_Pyrenei



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen, descriptions of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-03
Updated: 2014-09-03
Packaged: 2018-02-15 23:22:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2247210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiara_Pyrenei/pseuds/Kiara_Pyrenei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miguel Arreciado is a good scientist. He's mostly a good person, he thinks. After all, what action can't be justified in the service of such a noble cause as the pursuit of knowledge?</p><p>Mostly an intro to my Db!Carlos headcanon, which I hope to use in future fics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scientific Ethics

  
  
  
===============  
  
When Miguel was seven, he found a group of baby birds in the bushes by his house.  
  
He had been setting up the kid’s solar power kit his sister had gotten him for his birthday. It was far below his level already, even though it said it was for his age group on the box, and he was intending on taking it apart to see how the panels worked. He’d just gotten the backing layer off to reveal the inner materials when he noticed them. There were three of them, huddling together on the ground, seemingly abandoned. He set down his project and knelt by them, curious and concerned. But before he could reach for one, his mother had come over and grabbed him by the arm, pulling him away.  
  
“You shouldn’t touch them, mijo,” she told him, “Or else the mother bird will smell you on them and never come back.”  
  
Miguel had considered this carefully. Was that true? How did his mother know that? It seemed to him that this kind of behavior wouldn’t be very adaptive in the wild. He tried asking, but his mother only shrugged and told him that nature worked in mysterious ways.  
  
Miguel didn’t like that at all. A mystery was just a thing that hadn’t been solved yet, not a thing to be accepted as it was. And so later that evening, while his mother was making dinner, he snuck outside to that space under the bushes.  
  
Now, if he took as his hypothesis that his mother had been right, and that birds would reject their own children if they had come into contact with human scent, how would he test it? He glanced back in the window to the house, making sure his mother was still otherwise occupied before he reached out and stroked one of the baby birds gently, being careful not to touch the others. The second one he touched gently with a nearby stick, careful not to harm it. It was important to separate all possible variables, after all, it wouldn’t be possible to say that scent was the cause unless you had some other kind of contact. The third bird would be his control.  
  
This done, he smiled and went back inside for dinner.  
  
But the next day, when he went out to check if anything had changed, he found one of the birds sitting dead on his porch, the family cat silently looking up at him for approval. The other two had been similarly dispatched.  
  
Even now, so many years later, Miguel could remember the sense of hurt, the profound disappointment his seven year old self had felt at this betrayal. But as much as he hated to admit it, he knew that it wasn’t the loss of such innocent life that stung.  
  
The loss of discovery, of knowledge, was much more tragic.  
  
  
================  
  
In college, he gets his first serious boyfriend. He’s a fellow scientist in the biology department, working on the same neuroimaging project. His name is Brad. He asked Miguel out over a pile of charts and data one late night in the lab, and now two years later they live together in a cheap student apartment where most of the wallspace is dominated by printouts of past research, star trek posters, and whiteboards full of scribbled notes.  
  
It’s good, mostly.  
  
True, Miguel finds a lot of his methodology to be relatively sloppy, and it’s starting to become obvious that his own complete obsession with whatever field of science he’s become fascinated with at the moment can be grating to his partner, who would prefer to have a social life. But really, he’d been juggling a chemistry and biology dual major with a physics minor in his undergrad, and now that he was in grad school the work load was if possible even tougher. A social life was hard to come by. He wished Bradley would _understand_ that.  
  
But those were minor issues, ultimately. The major issue turns out to be Miguel’s personal brand of research.  
  
He hadn’t really intended for it to become an experiment, or for it to get so involved. He was just… curious, was all. Brad had told him all about his past, his rather un-idyllic family life, the way the trauma manifested as a set of habits and triggers well into adulthood. And Miguel was sympathetic, really he was. But there was just so little proper research into the effects of PTSD and he was, after all, a scientist. He couldn’t help himself.  
  
It was just a little test. He just wanted to know what, exactly, those triggers were, whether sight or spoken or scent triggers tended to be stronger, maybe even do some brain imaging if he could figure out how to get Bradley into the machine. He could just ask, but then again that might taint his results. It would eliminate more variables if it was done without the subject’s knowledge.  
  
It started out innocent enough, just some subtle questioning, trying to figure out where the line was, what buttons there were to press. Then just the mention of a phrase, a place, just to test for a reaction. He found the scent test to be particularly fascinating; the introduction of a simple element that Bradley had mentioned form his childhood home into their bedroom air vent had his boyfriend irritable and twitchy for days, without him even being consciously aware of it.  
  
He supposed… maybe it got out of hand. But really, he was getting such valuable data, and it could be used to help people going through similar things, so when you thought about it that was, it wasn’t so wrong. Science was the highest ideal there was, the light that kept mankind moving forward, the only thing worth living for. It was all worth it, if even a small new fact could be learned. Bradley was a scientist. He would understand.  
  
Or so he thought.  
  
And yet, almost a month later, he found himself trying to comfort his boyfriend, who was huddled on the couch in the middle of an impressive panic attack, the second one that week. Eventually, he calmed down and fell asleep, but when he woke up and caught Miguel in the process of recording the event in his research log… Well. Suffice it so say there was a lot of angry screaming, and plenty of what were, in Miguel’s opinion, _unwarranted_ curse words thrown his way.  
  
Then Bradley packed his stuff and left, and that was the last he saw of him.  
  
Left with twice the rent payment and no kitchen utensils, Miguel couldn’t help but feel that the whole thing was quite the overreaction. Sure, perhaps he had gone a bit…far. He would admit that, he supposed. But it had all been with good intentions. Surely that counted for something? Didn’t it? It had to. He had just been trying to _help_. The first step to solving any problem was understanding it, after all.  
  
But after everything had already happened, after Bradley was already gone, there was nothing he could do about it now but try to put the knowledge to good use. He found that with a few clauses in his paper about ‘protecting his subjects anonymity’ and with some wording that may have suggested more consent than was actually acquired, his work was accepted for publication without much difficulty. It was well received, a good addition to his resume for future work. His advisor was more than pleased, and quickly offered him a significantly better position in the research group. He was proud of his accomplishments.  
  
Things really couldn’t have gone better, in the end.  
  
================  
  
Four years later, Miguel was digging through the mountain of mail piled up on his kitchen table. He had sorted out all the spam advertising, and the remaining pile seemed to all be unpaid bills of one sort or another. He scowled, leafing through envelopes.  
  
 _Electric bill._  
  
 _Rent notice._  
  
 _Car payment._  
  
 _Overdue notice from the cable company._  
  
Fucking **_great_**.  
  
Miguel threw them all aside in frustration, letting them scatter to the ground. God, begin unemployed was going to kill him. He needed a _job_. He’d applied to countless universities in the past six months, even applied to a fair amount of applied science companies, even though he generally hated the work. No replies. It seemed like being fired from three research positions had finally caught up to him.  
  
It really just wasn’t _fair_.  
  
He was a good scientist. No, not even good, he was a _great_ scientist. He had certainly been the best researcher they had at his most recent job. His coworkers were lazy and sloppy, doing just enough to keep their jobs. They were too busy focusing on sucking up the their bosses to accomplish any actual science. Miguel had been their only real asset, and they let him go for what? Some trivial violations of obscure ‘ethics’ rules. It was outrageous.  
  
 _Unconscionable,_ he scoffed to himself, _how dare he throw that word at me! You know what’s unconscionable? The way that fool mangles the cause of science in a pathetic attempt to publish the absolute drivel he calls research. Maybe he should stop overreacting to every minor bureaucratic misstep and start actually funding people who can get something done._  
  
He slammed his fist down on the table, scowling. He knew this wasn’t helping. He had already done everything he could; he wasn’t getting that job back and getting angry at Dr. Sutter wasn’t helping. He took a long moment to focus on his breathing, trying to fight the anger and the panic that was clawing its way out of his chest. Why was every job like this? Why couldn't they just let him do his work? His research was valuable, they couldn’t just _do_ this to him. How was he ever going to pay all these bills? He barely had money for food. He sighed, trying to calm his breathing as he slowly loosed his fist, getting control of himself and turning his attention back to the pile of mail in front of him. _Best to get all the bad news out of the way now,_ he thought, still a little shaky with the unfairness of it all as he picked up the next envelope.  
  
 _Phone bill._  
  
 _Credit Card bill._  
  
He was just about to throw another fit when he realized that the next envelope didn’t appear to be a bill at all, nor was it one of his mother’s obligatory holiday greeting cards. This letter was in a plain white envelope, labelled with his name in neat cursive lettering, and some sort of logo with an S inside a triangle embossed on the other side. There was no return address. Curiosity momentarily pushing his anxieties aside, he ripped open the envelope, pulling out a glossy, fancy look letter with the same logo at the top.

 

>   
>  _Dear Mr. Arreciado,_   
>  _We at Strex Corp Synernists Inc, a firm supporter of all the sciences, would like to express their admiration for your research and untiring dedication to the advancement of scientific progress, particularly in the areas of neuroscience and biology, and would be happy to invite you to an interview at a time of your choosing…_

  
  
Miguel raised an eyebrow as he finished the rest letter, incredulous. They were… offering him a job? Seriously? He tried to think back the to various places he had applied, because he was pretty sure he’d never heard of Strex Corp Synernists Inc. How did they get his address? He was at least fairly confident that this was a real offer, since he’d never seen a fake company spend this much money and effort on a piece of junk mail. Was this thing gold trimmed? Who the hell even _did_ that these days. Plus they seemed to know a fair amount about his history, so it was obviously not a form letter.  
  
But even if it was a real offer, didn’t mean they were being completely honest or that they would actually pay him enough to live on. There were plenty of companies running scams like that. Plus, this was obviously an offer for an applied science position, which Miguel despised on principle. He was a theoretical scientist, he wanted to _understand_ things, not use them to make money.  
  
But then again, on the subject of making money… he really, _really_ did need the job. And hell, he’d worked with applied types before. There was usually plenty of ways to do your own research on the side, as long as you did decent work on what they wanted you to so. It wouldn’t be so bad, he supposed. He glanced at the sheet of directions included with the letter. Desert Bluffs. He’d never heard of that city, which meant it was probably little more than a dot on the map, but then again he had always liked the feel of small towns. It wouldn’t be so bad, he thought again. Just long enough to save up some money, long enough to find a position in pure research.  
  
It was at least worth going in to speak with them.  
  
================  
  
  
  
Miguel couldn’t understand how Strex Corp existed, really. Just the civil right violations alone should have been enough to get it wiped form the face of the map, and that wasn’t even factoring in all the straight up murder. And yet, they seemed to be completely above reproach, practically ruling the town with an iron fist. Well, an iron fist and plenty of psychoactive drugs. Plus some selective torture.  
  
Strex was honestly terrifying, Miguel thought for not even close to the first time, as he passed one of the higher ups in the reeducation department, who appeared to be laughing quietly to himself.  
  
 _They’re all crazy,_ he thought to himself, shaking his head and he unlocked his lab.  
  
Really, he didn’t belong here at all. He was a theoretical scientist, not an applied one. Strex was first and foremost a business, no matter much much money they put into research. All they wanted from him was something they could sell, or use to control their consumers. It wasn’t his field. He found the focus on profit despicable.  
  
And yet… he had been here two years now, and Miguel had to admit, he hadn’t really bothered to spend much time looking for another position. Mostly because Strex didn’t seem to care that he spent more time on his own projects than theirs, as long as theirs got done, so he had plenty of freedom. Not to mention the pay scale was simply _exorbitant_. True, his coworkers had also turned out to be… much more terrifying than expected, to say the least. The concept of doubles had caught him quite by surprise as well, and he hadn’t even be able to get one of them for testing yet. _Quite_ unfortunate. He had to say, overall, that living surrounded by those people, by this much blood and horror was taxing on the mind of someone who didn’t subscribe to their warped set of values. He hated it. He hoped one day he’d have the guts to do something about it.  
  
But he still hadn’t left.  
  
And in the end, he supposed that was because of the science. They were just funding so much of his _science_.  That mattered more to him than whatever the people around him may or may not have been doing. After all, it wasn’t like _he_ was the one participating in their games. He was a good person, mostly, just surrounded by bad things. He isn’t responsible for that. He was just in his own little world, his lab, doing his own work. _Valuable_ work. Work that would help people.  
  
It wasn’t a bad life. He liked it, even if he didn’t like where he was doing it.

  
He started to scrub the gore from his newest project off his hands, trying to make sure it didn't stain his shirt. it was the one with the equation for the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow on it, one of his favorites. That finished, he left the corpse for the janitors to clean and headed back to his room, hoping to relax and watch the science channel for a few hours before he went to bed.

 

_No, it really wasn't a bad life at all._   


**Author's Note:**

> I think I enjoy writing this delusional wierdo. I'm hoping to write more strex fics in the future.
> 
> I'm also thinking of opening an RP blog for him, but that's still in the works. For now though, if you want you can still direct questions at him on my personal blog, nightvaleswimclub, and I'd be happy to have him answer.
> 
> As always, any kudos, bookmarks, or especially comment always make my day! :D


End file.
